News
Herbs are a hit
It’s show thyme! Rosemary, fennel, sage and thyme are the taste of the 2006 RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Garden designers and floral exhibitors at this year’s show are set to highlight the culinary, medicinal and aromatic benefits of herbs.
According to the Horticultural Trade Association more than £22 million was spent on herb plants in 2004, which demonstrates that growing herbs is popular with the British public. As ever designers at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show are at the cutting edge of what is hot in the garden and a wide variety of well liked, and a selection of more unusual, herbs will be showcased at the world famous flower show.
The scent of lavender, rosemary, mint and thyme will greet visitors to The Saga Insurance Garden, where hardy and half-hardy herbs will grow with perennials and illustrate how herbs can be used in a contemporary space. Cleve West, the garden designer, aims to demonstrate the importance of herbs, not just from an aesthetic point of view, but also for their medicinal, culinary and domestic use. This garden will feature unusual varieties of herbs, including gotu kola (Centella asiatica), a healing herb, South African wild rosemary (Eriocephalus africanus) and a variegated Australian rosemary (Westringia fruticosa ‘Variegata’).
In The 4Head Garden of Dreams, which aims to provide a sensory experience, scented herbs in muted colours will populate a meadow. Many of the herbs that will be used in this garden are known to possess medicinal benefits. Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) has calming properties, wild marjoram (Origanum vulgare) will lift spirits and calm nerves and mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is a mild anaesthetic and is used to induce sleep.
Another of the show gardens to feature herbs is the Living on the Edge garden where there will be aromatic plants and herbs that are good for cooking and will also promote the healing and relaxing qualities of plants.
Within the Great Pavilion Jekka McVicar, who was crowned ‘Queen of Herbs’ by Jamie Oliver and is one of Rick Stein’s food heroes, will be displaying ‘Herbs of our past and our future’. This display will explore the centuries-old heritage of using herbs for a wide range of culinary and medicinal purposes and also celebrate the role that herbs continue to play today. Key plants include the burn jelly plant (Bulbine frutescens), Atlas Mountain mint (Mentha suaveolens subsp. timija) and Corsican, or slender, borage (Borago pygmaea). The Cottage Herbery will also be at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2006 and will be celebrating 30 years of growing organically and peat free.